Chapter 14 Bound by Blood #2

"The council wants to assess her," Heimdall said.

"In the context of the developing situation.

Her capacity the incorrectness perception at the level she's developed it, the integrated human god operational model she's built.

Father wants to see it directly." He paused.

"And there is a secondary discussion that Father wants to have in her presence. "

"What discussion?" Thor said.

Heimdall looked at him. The gold eyes, direct. "He didn't specify that in the communication," he said. "But the context" he paused “the context of the communication suggested it was about her. About her situation."

"Her situation," Thor said.

"Her situation in relation to the ongoing engagement," Heimdall said. "And possibly in relation to the gods' current disposition on Midgard."

The room was quiet again. Elara had stopped writing. Thor looked at her. She was looking at Heimdall with the full direct assessment. "When?" she said.

"When you're able to travel," Heimdall said.

"The Bifrost will not be the conventional Bifrost connection to Asgard as that is not something your physiology can sustain.

Odin is aware of this. The council meeting would be" he paused “a different arrangement.

A divine space on Midgard. Something accessible. "

"Tell me when," she said. "I'll be there."

The evening was quieter than the afternoon.

The forty-one extracted people had been assessed by Pita and the most critical Māia among them, given the duration of her preservation had been transferred to the Queenstown hospital via the cover story that Aroha's operational infrastructure provided.

The others had been housed in the station's various spaces.

In the managed chaos of a significant number of people who were alive and disoriented and needed food and warmth and the patient human contact of people who would sit with them and not demand that they make sense of their situation immediately.

The hunter network was good at this. The extracted people from Port Melbourne and Sydney had received the same care, the same patient presence, the same unhurried space for their reentry into the world.

It was a skill that Elara had developed in her network over five years and that she had documented in the operational protocols as seriously as she documented the combat procedures.

Because both were the work and both required the same professional commitment.

She was in the station's small office at nine PM, finishing the documentation that she'd been building since the afternoon. Lefthand notes. Slower, but more complete. Freyja came in.

"You should be sleeping," Freyja said.

"I should be finishing the debrief documentation," Elara said. "I'll sleep after."

"Your arm," Freyja said.

"Is splinted," Elara said. "Pita said twenty-four hours to the hospital. It's been" she checked “seven hours. I have seventeen hours."

Freyja sat down in the chair across the small desk. "Odin's message," Freyja said.

"Heimdall briefed you," Elara said.

"I knew before Heimdall briefed me," Freyja said, in the way of someone for whom knowing things before the briefing is simply the nature of their perception.

Elara stopped writing and looked at her. "The secondary discussion that Odin didn't specify," she said.

"Yes," Freyja said.

"What is it?" Elara said.

Freyja was quiet for a moment. The way someone sits while preparing to say a difficult thing with full honesty and without softening.

"Odin has been watching you," Freyja said.

"Through Heimdall. Since before Thor formally brought you into the operation.

The Council has been watching you since before Thor knew you existed.

" She paused. "The perception you've developed, they’ve been tracking its development.

And the operational model you've built. And the way you collaborate with divine operatives, the integration quality.

" She looked at the desk. "You're unprecedented, Elara.

That's not a word the council uses lightly. "

"Unprecedented in what sense?" Elara said.

"In the sense that in the council's documented history of human god interaction on Midgard going back to the full historical record there has not been a human who has developed divine range perception to this level through training alone, without a divine artifact, without an Aesir bloodline, without any mechanism other than" she paused “than their own capacity, carefully and deliberately developed. "

Elara looked at her steadily.

"The council discussion that Odin wants to have in your presence," Freyja said.

"It's about what that means. It's about what you are, in the context of what you've demonstrated, and what the implications are for" she stopped.

"They want to discuss your future. In relation to the gods' ongoing engagement on Midgard. "

"My future," Elara said.

"Your future," Freyja said. "And one phase of it is that the council has discussed it. It's been on the table since the Sydney operation." She held Elara's gaze. "The possibility of the Iðunn gift."

The room was quiet.

Elara knew enough of the mythology that in this world was not mythology but the technical documentation of actual processes to know what the Iðunn gift was.

The golden apples. The mechanism of divine immortality, or something close enough to it that the distinction was largely semantic.

The thing that kept the gods of Asgard as they were not unkillable, but undying in the standard mortal sense, not subject to the aging that was the fate of mortal biology.

She had not expected to hear these words. She sat with them for a moment. "Loki," she said. "The apple."

"The apple he carries is his own provision," Freyja said. "He's been carrying it so long it's become an affectation. But yes, the Iðunn apple is what you're understanding it to be."

"The council is discussing offering me immortality," Elara said.

"The council is discussing the question," Freyja said.

"It hasn't been offered. It's in discussion.

Odin wants to speak to you directly, with full information, and hear your response.

" She paused. "Which is unusual. The council discussing it is unusual.

Presenting it to the human in question directly is something I don't have a precedent for. "

"Why now?" Elara said. "Why this situation?"

"Because the command source is not destroyed," Freyja said.

"Because it retreated, damaged and without the relic, but it retreated rather than ended.

Because Odin's assessment is that the ongoing engagement the full scope of what Operation Deep Root has partially resolved is going to require a level of sustained human god integrated operation that extends beyond the current timeline. " She paused.

"And because a human with your capacity, your perception development, your operational intelligence is a resource that is not replaceable.

If you die in the ongoing engagement, that capacity is lost. The operational model you've built can survive, it’s documented; it can be transmitted. But the perception you've developed."

"Dies with me," Elara said.

"Yes," Freyja said.

"So, the council wants to preserve a resource," Elara said.

"The council wants to address an unprecedented situation in an appropriate way," Freyja said, with someone correcting an oversimplification without dismissing the point it contains. "The resource consideration is real. It's also not the whole of it."

"What's the rest of it?" Elara said.

Freyja looked at her for a moment. "You know what the rest of it is," she said.

Elara was quiet.

"Thor," she said.

"The council is aware of what you are to each other," Freyja said.

"Odin is aware. The divine mortal relationship has a history that is not entirely comfortable from the council's perspective, not because of the relationship itself, but because of what it produces, the grief of immortality alongside mortality.

A god watching a mortal age and die is" she stopped.

"It has consequences. For the god. Consequences that affect their operational capacity and their" she seemed to search for the right word “their presence.

Their ability to remain present in the ongoing work. "

"So, the council is also protecting Thor," Elara said.

"The council is considering the full picture," Freyja said. "Which is what councils do."

Elara sat for a long moment. The documentation was untouched in front of her. The pen in her lap because she'd put it down to have this conversation.

She thought about what immortality meant. She had been thinking about it since the first time the word had come up between her and Thor. An unspoken thing that was present in every conversation about the future and in every moment when the future was implied.

She had not allowed herself to think about it directly.

She thought about what she was. A human woman, thirty-one years old.

The product of a woman who had studied Norse mythology and a father she barely remembered.

A demon attack at seventeen and five years of building a hunter network.

She had cracked ribs that were not fully healed.

A fractured arm. An ankle that was going to need proper assessment.

And a perception capacity that apparently the gods' council considered unprecedented and unreplaceable.

She thought about what immortality would mean.

She would not age. She would not die of the causes that killed mortal humans.

She could still be killed the gods could be killed, in circumstances, by forces but the ordinary mortality, the biological clock, the countdown that was every human life's background condition that would stop.

She thought about what it would mean to live for centuries. To watch the world change, to watch everyone she currently knew die in the normal way of mortality.